Today’s race is important. It’s a qualifier for a whole series of big races later in the year, some even on the continent, and unfortunately a troupe of incredibly fit Dutchmen have turned up. Paul does a long warm-up to disassociate himself from life outside the velodrome. Just before he lines up for the start he glimpses Silas on the grandstand. That puts fear into him. Not necessarily a bad thing. As he rests, Harry ambles up to him.
‘Hello Paul, how are you?’
‘Fine. A little out of breath, but not more than I should be.’
‘You look fine. It’s a tricky track. And that’s if your bike and your health are both up to scratch.’
‘I feel I’m quite fit, have been doing a lot of training lately, and the bike is in as good a nick as it’ll ever be.’
‘Sometimes, it’s got nothing to do with that. Sometimes cycling goes beyond reality. On a good day your chain purrs like a fat cat being stroked in the sunshine. Your spokes whisper sweet nothings, your tyres remain hard and your saddle is part of you rather than a separate piece of leather.’
‘That’s true. Let’s just hope today is a good day,’ Paul says, glancing towards the starting line.
‘On bad days, the opposite,’ Harry continues. ‘You can’t get into any rhythm. Your wheels seem softer, heavier than your opponent’s. Your bike is an admiralty anchor, your legs are made from slag, and it feels like you’re swimming wearing a chainmail suit. Yet still you push. You silence the voice inside telling you to give up, to let your heart rest from the torture.’
Paul gets off his bike. Weary of what Harry is saying and of the cramps that come and go, unexplainable like weather systems, he’s stretching. Holding onto the top tube and bending at the waist. Keeping his legs, back, and arms straight. His mind too.
Harry smiles and says, ‘The ability to disregard, to pretend to yourself that today you’re having a great time and glory will be yours, is the main difference between you and the other cyclists.’
Paul nods and gets back on the bike. Clicks his feet into place. Pulls up his shorts, pulls down his top. Flexes his arms.
‘I know you’ll do well out there. You always do,’ Harry says.
Paul leaves the side of the track and rolls toward his designated place on the starting line.
He takes three deep breaths. Then comes the crack of the gun and the immediate pain of hoped-for glory. He gets a good start. Manages to squeeze in to be third in a big field, close to the bottom line, where the distance he’ll be riding is a lot shorter than if he was higher up. The sun is out and he affords himself a little smile now that he’s underway. Now that he doesn’t have to think about anything besides racing. After the long warm-up his legs are used to the motion, and he relaxes a little. Nothing’s going to happen in the first five laps. Then, after that, anything can.
The first time he ever rode the velodrome at Kensal Rise he didn’t know about high turn two and low turn four and buckled his front wheel. Paul had an important race on the Monday, at Fallowfield Stadium in Manchester. An awful shale track, long and steep, cold and unforgiving, the site of the controversial 1919 Championship. Jack fixed the bike overnight and cycled it to Copenhagen Street in time for Paul to catch the train.
That was many months ago now, and Paul feels like he knows the track well. Like an old dog, a well-worn jacket. The first fifteen laps pass before anyone really does anything other than positioning. They are all trying to sense the pace, the wind, the mood, the willingness of the others.
He hears shouts and what he presumes are jokes in Dutch. A strange guttural sound. Two of the Dutchmen, gangly greyhounds, possibly brothers, weave in and out of the field with expertise they can only have gained from years of racing. They are freckled and fair like Paul. Their shared complexion doesn’t mean that the brothers won’t do their best to kill him.
On lap forty-two the shouts and jokes stop and the professionals, he now realises that’s what they are, knuckle down to do some real racing. It’s beyond human. He tells himself it’s impossible. His body now turns into pig iron as he tells himself nothing should hurt this much.
The pace picks up.
The Dutchmen are pushing for a fast pace. Paul runs out of water long before he should. He feels like he’s got nothing to stoke his fire with. Some days his body just won’t listen to his commands. It has turned into an unruly army, a mass of deserters. His limbs threaten to give up. He can’t have that. It doesn’t work like that, he tells himself. The gulf between mind and body grows wider and wider for every lap, for every push on the pedals. Then a group of three riders try to break free. Or is it four? He can’t see properly though eyes running with sweat, frustrated tears, and the sharp prickles of dust from the riders in front of him. It feels like he’s swallowed sandpaper, but he won’t give up. The group, three riders, he can see now, are still pushing hard. The fourth rider, an Englishman with a great moustache and what looks like the kind of swimming caps cross-Channel swimmers use, has pulled back, screaming in pain and frustration. His ears standing out like wing nuts, now that he’s pulled off his hat.
Paul decides to make a point of asking the man about his headgear after the race, but soon forgets in the sheet lightning of pain coursing through his body.
‘Bloody Dutchmen,’ he groans under his breath, over and over until he’s caught up with the group of three. The last man looks over his shoulder, and notices Paul. He shouts something in that gruff tongue of theirs and the first and second man, nodding as if this was all going to plan, simultaneously stand up. Push, push, push. Half a lap. Paul is still on the back wheel of the last one.
The Dutchmen have devised a strategy whereby the last person, the one just in front of Paul, eases off. The gap between Paul and the two riders out front widens. The third man looks over his shoulder and smiles, still easing off, pulling to the right, up on the track. Making it hard for Paul to pass, even if he had the lungs and legs to do so. The Dutchman now looks over his shoulder and changes the position of his hands on the handlebars, from a grip up on the top to the vertical bend. Still monitoring Paul; an owl eyeing a mouse. The Dutchman turns his attention back to the track, to the gap up to his countrymen.
Just as the man’s eyes leave him, Paul swerves down from the line he’s been holding slightly above. For a split second Paul eases off, lets the momentum and gravity propel him forwards to the inside of the Dutchman. To a place the man never thought Paul could fit in. This is his one chance to leave some of the competition behind, to catch the two out-runners. He feels his mind go blank and his vision go black. His muscles pull him back into his body. Only the acute pain keeps him conscious.
When he can see again he’s closer to the leading pack than he is to the Dutchman groaning behind him. Another couple of pushes and he changes that balance more and more. Now he reaches behind him to the pocket of his sweater and fishes out two pills. One he shouldn’t be taking for another thirty laps. The other is an emergency one he always carries in case he was to drop a pill. He greedily swallows them both. Soon he can’t feel anything. Soon he’s all speed.